Render Scale Issue

Maya
1

Massive frustration.

I have a detailed model of a commercial building I created a while back in 3D MAX. I am trying to render out Paint FX and Furr and comp in PS. If I setup a use background shader and apply it to the Bldng Model with a white swatch assigned to the image plane. I should get Paint FX with dark shadows against a white background. This I do get but I also get "self Shadowing" from the building it's self which is mixed in with PFX shadows. If I turn of Cast Shadows but leave Recieve Shadows On, I don't get any shadows at all.
If I have both Cast and Recieve On I get shadows From the Bldng and PFX. What Do I Do Now?

I am wondering if this is a scale issue. I've set up a small plane and sphere with a spot light casting shadows and PFX in front o fsphere and I can get the sphere to Recieve Shadows but Not "Self Shadow" (The Sphere is deformed!) in a small scene.

The MAX File was created with inches as it's default measurement so the imported file is much larger than the standard CM in MAYA so everything is much bigger.

Is this why I'm having These Problems? Also I've noted that If you create an Image Plane and it's offset is set to 10 for example It is 10 units away. But If you scale the Camera up so you can see it in the Viewport the distance the image plane is from the CAM is multiplied as well so you have to set Cam back to 1 for instance to be reltaive same distance. This is a problem I had in this scene but thought It was fixed. If it's related I don't know what to do next.

Thanks Folks,

Jason Brummett

2

well the scale is not realy the problem the problem is how big the z buffer is. tha smalle r the more detail. But dong get confused the scale of this has nothing to do with how big anything is just how much data there is. So i suggest you start lunking the near and far planes maualy.

3

I have already adjusted the Clip planes near and far to the Maximum.

No Dice.

I sent Gmask a copy of the scene file last night hoping he could figure out my major mal function.

JB

4

Yes well the idea is kindof to make them as close as possible to eachother! Oh and if you dont disable the aut near far clipping it wont help.

but the problem might be something alltogether different too..

5

Thanks for helping out Jooja,

Actually I haven't had time to re-investigate that I just gave up but I found an old thread late last night from Duncan. I posted this in the PFX column as It should go on to the Living MAYA FAQ. Quickly stated theres a bug in 4.0 and I don't know if it's fixed but at least one mesh object has to be Recieving and Casting Shadows for PFX shadows to work. Duncan suggests creating this object and scaling it down to like .001. It has to be withing the CAM's view and Cliop planes.

Later,

JB